Good All The Time

 Good All The Time

Matthew 14:22-33; Romans 10:10-13[1]

There’s a tradition in Presbyterian gatherings where the leader says, “God is good!” when it’s time for the group to settle down. The response is supposed to be “All the Time!” Then the leader announces, “All the Time!” and the group responds, “God is good!” On the surface of things, I think it’s a pretty great thing that we start gatherings with a reminder that God loves us so much that he’s good to us all the time. But being a student of language, I think not only about what it says or what the words mean but also how it works. So you probably won’t be surprised that I’m not entirely comfortable with this practice. Because when we say together, “God is good, all the time!” in that setting, the point of it is that it’s time to hush and listen to what the speaker has to say. I’ve mentioned before that instead of settling down and being quiet, if we really meant what we’re saying, we would burst into spontaneous celebration!

One of the reasons why we don’t do that, in my opinion, is we’re not sure we believe “God is good, all the time!” Life can be wonderful at times, like when you’re holding your newborn child or grandchild. But life can be hard and painful at times as well. It’s in those times I think we wonder most whether God really is good. It doesn’t help that the Hebrew Bible is full of statements about how “angry” God is. Especially for those of us who may have grown up with abusive parents. For us, “anger” doesn’t mean that God loves us so much that he’s upset with us when we do things that could hurt us or endanger us, like any good parent would. “Anger” means that God is just looking for an excuse to take his self-hatred out on us by “striking” us in some way. There’s really nothing good about that! Many of us have grown up with a keen sense that somehow, we never lived up to all the expectations of our parents. Most of us carry that burden in some way, and we tend to project it onto God and assume that God is disappointed with us as well. I think we’re not really sure we believe that “God is good, all the time.”

But the Scriptures insist over and over, especially in the Hebrew Bible, that God is indeed good, and that God is good all the time. We have a word for it: we call it “grace.” But “grace” is one of those words we use all the time without actually knowing what it means. In the Bible, “grace” means that God’s love for us never fails. “Grace” means God truly is “good all the time.” And “grace” means that’s true simply because that’s who God is, not because of anything we might do to “deserve” it as a “reward.” The truth of the matter is that we can never have enough faith, we can never be good enough, we can never do enough to deserve God’s love and goodness. God gives them to us anyway because that’s who God is! That’s what “grace” means. And that’s the testimony of Scripture, over and over again. It’s the point of the verse from our Psalm reading for today says God’s unfailing love combines with the fact that he is always true to his nature: “Loyal love and faithfulness meet; deliverance and peace greet each other with a kiss” (Ps 85:10, NET). Those things come together in God’s character and assure us that yes, God really is good all the time!

I think we see something of God’s goodness reflected in the way Jesus interacts with Peter in our Gospel lesson. At the outset, we should note that in Matthew, discipleship is always practiced by people who are called “you of little faith.” That’s what Jesus called the ones who were going to be called “the Apostles” and have statues built in their honor all over the world! We see it in this story when they become afraid in a boat that’s being “battered” by a storm “at the very dead of night” (Mt 14:25, NTE)! One of the ways that Matthew calls attention to the original disciples’ “little faith” is by telling the story of Peter asking to walk on the water. Only Matthew tells this story. It’s been commonly observed that Peter’s “faith” was demonstrated by being willing to get out of the boat in the midst of a storm, and that his “doubt” came when he shifted his attention from Jesus to the wind and the waves and began to sink. The idea is that if he had had enough faith, he would have been able to walk on the water just like Jesus did.

But I’m not so sure about all that. I don’t think getting out of a boat in the middle of a storm is such a good idea. I would say Peter demonstrates his “doubt” by asking to walk to Jesus on the water in the first place. When Jesus called out to them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (Mt 14:27), he was trying to reassure the disciples. But Peter didn’t trust Jesus’ word. Instead, he wanted “proof.” So Peter said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water” (Mt 14:28)! Peter sounds doubtful! I tend to agree with those who, like John Calvin, think that a response of faith on Peter’s part would have been to take to heart the assurance Jesus gave him and stay in the boat![2] That’s where he was supposed to be. That’s where he was needed. And Peter needed that boat to keep from sinking into the waves during a raging storm! But when Peter plunged out onto the waters and began to sink, Matthew’s Gospel says that Jesus “immediately reached out his hand and caught him” (Mt 14:31). I think one of the lessons we’re meant to come away with is that God shows us his goodness by always “catching” us, even when we’re still waist-deep in the water with the storm raging all around us! God always “catches” us.

Paul makes a similar point in our lesson from Romans. I particularly like the part that says: “‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be disappointed,’” and “The same Lord is the Lord of all and gives many blessings to all who trust in him” (Rom 10:11-12, NCV). I like it even better in Gene Peterson’s The Message translation: “Scripture reassures us, ‘No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.’ It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s … background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help.”

“Incredibly generous.” I think that has to be one of the best phrases to describe God’s grace I’ve ever heard. “Incredibly generous.” I think the heart of Paul’s message in this passage is that God is incredibly generous all the time, and to everyone. And as Paul insists, that’s a thoroughly biblical concept. He’s quoting Scripture passages here. He’s quoting from the Hebrew Bible! God loves us all unconditionally. God offers new life to us all, without any exceptions or exclusions. And God does this simply because that’s who God is.[3] We can ever do enough to deserve or earn God’s love or God’s goodness, but that means we don’t have to do anything to earn it! From the standpoint of biblical faith, from Moses to the the Psalms to the prophets to Jesus to the Apostles, the fundamental message of the Bible is that “God is good, all the time,” simply because that’s who God is!

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[1] © 2026 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/9/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 2, 240–241. Cf. also Gene Boring, “Gospel of Matthew” New Interpreters Bible IX:329-30: “Faith is not being able to walk on the water—only God can do that—but daring to believe, in the face of all evidence, that God is with us in the boat, … as it makes its way through the storm, battered by the waves.”

[3] Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 1933, 102-103: “Grace is the generous and free will of God, His will to accept us; its necessity proceeds from Him and from Him only. … the necessity that God shall maintain and show forth His faithfulness, without any provision by us of an occasion for its display—but simply because He is God; … .”

More Than We Have Seen

More Than We Have Seen

Luke 20:27-38[1]

I was reminded recently that our “vision” is always limited. I can wholeheartedly echo the sentiment that I’ve heard many times: we typically don’t do well when we try to predict the future. I would say my ability to predict the future is virtually non-existent! Maybe that’s something we could all say. Just when we think we know what’s around the bend, life has a way of proving us wrong. If we averaged our success at predicting the future as a “batting average,” I would say that most of us wouldn’t make it very far in a baseball or softball league! Our vision is always limited.

At least part of the problem for me is that I try to use the past to predict the future. I think I’m not alone in that. When we try to envision the future based on the past, we are necessarily limiting our perspective. Some of the best things that have come into my life have come as a total surprise. Nothing in my past could have made it possible for me to foresee them. You might say the same. Sometimes, using the past to determine our view of the future leads to a pessimistic outlook. It’s the viewpoint that says with Benjamin Franklin that “in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” That kind of attitude is common, but it’s a pretty hopeless view of life. Since everyone dies, that way of looking at things gives death has the final word on everything. And if death has the final word, then we’re all trapped in the vicious circles of selfishness, hatred, poverty, violence, injustice, and despair that we can see all around us. That’s not an approach to life that gives us much enthusiasm for living today, let alone looking forward to tomorrow.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was responding in part to this kind of pessimism about life. He had been answering questions from various groups of Jewish leaders, each one intent on embarrassing him in front of the people. One question came from the Sadducees. They were the ruling priests who controlled the Temple. They were also the ones who held most of the wealth and power in their society. And as Luke tells us, the Sadducees didn’t believe in any “resurrection.” They lived in a closed system, and they weren’t open to the idea that there could be any more to life than what they had already seen. The Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him about the practice of a man marrying his brother’s widow. Moses had told them to do this so that the first child would be the descendant of the dead brother, to ensure that his name would continue to live on among the people. Their question to Jesus was about seven brothers who in turn married the same woman. They asked him, “In the resurrection … whose wife will the woman be?” (Lk. 20:33). I don’t think they were seriously looking for an answer. They didn’t believe in any “resurrection.” They were just trying to make the idea of a “resurrection” look ridiculous. And Jesus with it.

But Jesus “corrected” them. In another Gospel, he tells them “You understand neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Mt 22:29, NASB)! He said this to the people who were in charge of the Temple! Jesus corrected them by recalling the time when Moses met God at the burning bush. This was foundational for the Jewish faith. It was the episode when God revealed his “name” as “I am who I am.” There, God spoke of himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). When Moses had this encounter, the patriarchs had been dead for centuries. Jesus drew the inference that this proves that the dead are raised, for he said that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (Lk. 20:38). More than that, throughout the Bible, God is known as the “living God.” The prophets described God as the one who “lives” in contrast to the idols who were “dead” statues of wood and stone. But if God is the “living God,” and if God’s very being is defined by life, then it makes no sense to view the patriarchs, or anyone else, as truly dead. As Jesus put it, “to him all of them are alive.” In other words, God’s very nature as the “living” God challenged their pessimism.

I think one of the most important points Jesus was trying to make here is that you cannot limit God’s work in the future by what we have seen in the past. If God is the God of life, that means that our future is not one that’s defined by death, but rather by life. God’s work in the world is based on promises that point toward a future that is full of hope precisely because it’s based on God’s life. Promises like “I will wipe away every tear,” and “they will beat their swords into ploughshares,” and “He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry,” and “I am making everything new.” Our Psalm lesson for today reminds us that God always keeps his promises. The Christian faith is at heart the hope that God has begun to do just that through Jesus Christ. Our faith insists that from God’s perspective, the final word that defines everything and everyone is not death, but life.

I think that how we choose to look at all of this makes a great difference in our the work we do together as a congregation. For example, in the Reformed tradition we believe that stewardship is not just about money. It’s essentially a stance of faith in the “God of the living.” Because we believe in the life that God is bringing into this world through Jesus Christ, we practice stewardship by committing all we know ourselves to be to all we know Jesus Christ to be. I had a professor once define “conversion” that way. I think the whole Christian life is like that: committing all we know ourselves to be to all we know Jesus Christ to be. And as we grow in our understanding of who we are and who Jesus is, we’re able to see our lives more and more as a gift from God to be invested for the sake of the Kingdom.

On the other hand, if we choose to live within a closed system and assume that there’s only so much to go around, we’re probably not going to be willing to risk much when it comes to investing our lives for the sake of the kingdom of God. But if we can look at things from the perspective of God’s future, a future in which the final word is life, then perhaps maybe we can step out in faith. If we can see the future as essentially open to all that God is doing in and through us, we have a whole different motivation for practicing our faith, including practicing our stewardship. In that kind of future, our “labor in the Lord” is “not in vain” but rather makes an important contribution toward advancing God’s purposes in our community and our world. I think that puts our stewardship, our faith commitment, and everything we do, in a whole different light.

We all have the choice: we can live as if the past overrules any hope for the future, and death ultimately makes life “useless.” There have always been people who have taken this point of view, living without hope, clinging desperately to their lives out of fear. If we choose to assume that our best is back there in the past somewhere—which means it’s gone—I doubt that we’re going to invest much of anything for God’s Kingdom. But if we choose to live based on the faith that the “God of life” is at work among us and through us to make everything new, then maybe we can have the courage to stake our lives on God’s promises. It’s a risk, because there’s a lot about life that seems to contradict those promises. But when we embrace God’s vision for the future, perhaps we’ll begin to realize that God’s vision very likely includes much more than we have seen. In fact, I would say that God’s vision is such that we really have no idea what God can or cannot do in our lives, in this congregation, and in this community!

The next step is to put our faith into practice every day by praying without ceasing, by giving back what we’ve been given, by helping those in need, by inviting others to join us, by promoting a sense of community among us, by studying the Bible together, and by joining together for worship on the Lord’s Day. When we invest our lives for the sake of the kingdom of God, it’s a big vision we’re taking on. When we open ourselves to God’s vision, we can begin to grasp the full weight of the hope that God has things in store for us that we wouldn’t believe if we knew them in advance! When we base our lives on this vision for the future, we humbly recognize that we can’t do it alone. We need the living God who is the source of everything we have to send us what we need to do the work. More than that, we need God himself working in and through us, remembering that God’s last word is not death but life!

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 11/9/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Is Anyone There?

 Is Anyone There?

Psalm 121; Luke 18:1-8[1]

There is a question that has haunted the human family since the beginning. If you look at the religious beliefs and practices through the ages, and if you “read between the lines,” I think you’ll find that question. From ancient times we have wondered whether there is a God, and whether that God cares about us at all. I think this question was even at the heart of the earliest religions, when people worshipped many “gods.” The stories they told themselves about their “gods” betray a fundamental anxiety about our place in the world. The “gods” of ancient mythologies aren’t even good people, let alone “gods”! And underneath it all lies the question whether whatever “higher power” there may “out there” be is able to help us at all, and whether that power cares enough about us to do so.

When science and the church taught that the earth was at the very center of the universe, I think it may have been easier to believe in a God who cares for us. Our relative importance in the whole scheme of things was huge, and we felt more confident about our faith in God. But even in those times, there were catastrophes and tragedies that made people ask that question whether God can really do anything to help us, and whether God cares enough to do so. In more recent days, with our scientific perspective on how small the earth is compared to the rest of universe, I think that question has become even more pressing. At least for some people. Given the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, we can easily question whether there is a God, and whether any God there might be could or would pay much attention to us.

Even in a Christian context, this anxiety has been expressed through a centuries-old question: If God is both loving and all-powerful, how can there be evil in the world? The presence of tragedy in our lives suggests that God loves us but he’s not powerful enough to stop these things from happening. Or it suggests that God is powerful enough to stop them, but since he doesn’t he must not be loving. Although many have tried to address this question, I don’t think any of the “answers” really help. Most of them offer some sort of rational explanation. But that doesn’t really do much for the feeling of anxiety that the traumas and tragedies that life can bring. The only answer to the heartbreaks of life is to find a way to trust that God does indeed have the power to help us and does indeed care enough about us to do so.

Our Psalm for today addresses this question. The Psalmsinger looks to the mountains to try to figure out whether there is anyone there to help. The reason for looking to the mountains is because in ancient times people believed that the “gods” lived in the high places of the world. So when the Psalmsinger looks to the mountains and asks himself where he can find help, he’s looking for God. In this case, looking to the mountains reminds the Psalmsinger that “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth!” (Ps 121:2, NLT). I think at least a part of the meaning here is that God is bigger than any mountain, because God created all the heavens and the earth. The Psalmsinger’s hopes aren’t confined to a so-called a “deity” that lives on a particular mountain. His hope and his help come from the God who made all the heavens and the earth, the whole cosmos and everything in it!

I think there are a couple of linked ideas here that can help us. As powerful as a mountain can appear, God’s power is far greater. I think many of us experience mountains as a display not only of grandeur but also of power. But God’s power is far greater, because God is the creator of all the heavens and the earth. That’s one of the most basic ideas of the Bible. It’s where Genesis begins: God created all the heavens and the earth. And that means whatever you can find in creation or in the whole cosmos that impresses you with its beauty, its grandeur, or its display of power, God’s power is greater. The Psalmsinger reminds himself and us that our faith that the God who created all the heavens and the earth is the God who is our help and our hope means that he most certainly does have the power to help us!

But the other part of the question concerns whether God cares enough to use that power to help us. That’s at least part of the lesson from our Gospel reading for today. In it, Jesus tells a parable about a woman who was a widow, very likely in danger of losing her home because she was at the mercy of a corrupt judge, who had no interest in protecting her. Jesus’s parable tells us that this man doesn’t care about God, and he doesn’t care about people. It seems clear that the only reason he held his position was to enrich himself. But this is no ordinary widow. She persisted relentlessly in demanding that this judge grant her what was rightfully hers, and she kept doing so until she annoyed him! That’s why the traditional title for this passage is “The parable of the importunate widow.” That’s what “importunate” means: demanding what’s rightfully yours and doing until you annoy somebody. That’s what she did. And this corrupt judge confessed, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming” (Lk. 18:4-5)!

One point of this parable is the contrast between the unjust judge and the God whom Jesus demonstrates as gracious, loving, and caring. If a godless, inhumane judge will finally give in to a powerless widow’s unceasing requests for justice, how much more will our merciful and loving God “grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night” (Lk 18:7). And I think the answer is that he will most certainly do so! The promise of God’s justice throughout the Bible is that God will make things right, ultimately if not immediately. But perhaps that’s precisely where the problem lies. We have lots of affirmations in the Bible that God cares about us and will take care of us. We have promises that God will set things right. But life doesn’t always confirm those promises. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. Sometimes bad people do bad things to good people. And when that happens and we cry out to God for help, there are times when when all we can hear is silence. And that experience can leave us wondering whether there’s anyone there. That’s when we come back to the age-old question whether there is a God, and whether that God cares at all about us.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that at times like those, our perspective can get quite narrow. All we can see is the hardship or tragedy or the loss we’re dealing with. And all we can ask is, “Why?” or “How long?”, stuck in our pain and our fears. But in this parable, I think Jesus wants to help us focus our attention elsewhere. He wants to remind us that we believe in a God who is a loving Father who knows what we need, who wants what is best for us, and who is working constantly for our good. And he does all of this despite our inability to understand how our lives are unfolding. There are simply some questions we may never be able to answer. That’s one of the lessons faith teaches us. It’s okay to ask those questions. We just have understand we may never get an answer.

Sometimes people asked Jesus those kinds of questions. In response, Jesus pointed them to the God whose care we can trust in all the circumstances of our lives. Regardless of what we may have to go through here and now, the promise remains: God has all the power he needs to help us, and because he cares for us he will most definitely do so, if not immediately, then ultimately. We see that promise confirmed most clearly in Jesus. Through his life and his example, through his death and resurrection, we learn that God’s love is stronger than anything. The mountains do indeed remind us that God has the power to help us, but the cross and resurrection show us that he cares enough to use that power to help us. When we wonder whether there’s anyone there, we can remember God’s love never gives up, and never will until God accomplishes all the good he has planned for us all, for the whole human family, and for all creation.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 10/19/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Always Faithful

 Always Faithful

2 Timothy 2:1-16[1]

One of the challenges of living in these days of turmoil and strife is that it can leave you wondering on whom you can depend. The polarization we are all feeling divides churches, friends, families, and even marriages. It can make you uncertain about whom you can trust, or even with whom you can even discuss your concerns. That’s on top of the normal challenges we have with our relationships and our commitments. Even in the best of times, employees may find their years of loyalty to their companies rewarded with a pink slip. Friends have disagreements that turn into ruptures that turn into years of estrangement. Couples that pledge “til death do us part” find themselves going their separate ways. Relationships are always complicated, and because we’re human it’s always difficult to know on whom you can depend. It’s even more so in these trying times.

I would say that all of this is particularly challenging when you add betrayal to the mix. I don’t know about you, but I personally find betrayal something most difficult to forgive. I’ve learned over the years to forgive a lot. But forgiving a perceived betrayal of trust can be difficult. Most of us have some experience with this unfortunate part of human life. The truth of the matter is that people simply let us down sometimes. They very likely mean well, but when push comes to shove, they can disappoint us in the most disheartening of ways. Of course, since we’re “people” too, that applies to us as well. Recognizing that about myself helps me to forgive others. And as we all know, forgiving someone is something we do as much for ourselves as we do for one who we think has wronged us. But betrayal remains a challenge. It can take a long time, maybe years, maybe even decades, to forgive a perceived betrayal of trust. Truth be told, some of us never get there.

If you pay close attention to the story of the people who claim to trust and obey God, you find that we have betrayed God’s trust repeatedly. That’s the theme of the history books in the Bible: there is a cycle of betrayal, the subjugation of the people by a hostile enemy, their repentance and restoration, followed by further betrayal. It’s one of the major plots in the story of the people of Israel in that part of the Hebrew Bible. They continually betrayed God’s trust, and though they suffered consequences for it, he restored them every time. I think it’s important to recognize that even when they may have had to experience the consequences of their actions, in the end God always restored them. In fact, I would say that God was supporting them with his faithful love even and especially in the midst of those consequences. They may have abandoned God, but God never abandoned them. The truly remarkable feature of this story is the way that God remains true to himself by remaining faithful to love and care for his people, throughout all time and change, and regardless of our failures.

Our lesson from 2 Timothy for today addresses this issue in something of a “backhanded” way. There we find an interesting “litany.” It is one of the “sure” or “faithful” sayings that are found throughout 1 and 2 Timothy. The first part is fairly clear: “If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:11-12). This is a theme that St. Paul was fond of: our inclusion in the body of Christ means that we share in his death and resurrection. The purpose of this, as he says elsewhere, is “so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). That part is fairly clear.

It’s the second part of the litany that’s troubling: “if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13). On the surface, that doesn’t sound like good news. In fact, it sounds positively menacing. We’re used to hearing about the good news of salvation by God’s grace alone as a gift of his unconditional love. But this seems to introduce some conditions for actually achieving salvation. That impression is only reinforced by remembering that Jesus himself said, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mk. 8:38).

It sounds like we’re back to having to earn God’s love and trying to do enough good to deserve salvation! There is, of course, another way of looking at this strange litany. If we look at it from the perspective of the way God has dealt with people for generations, we could see it as a promise. From that point of view, it could mean that even when we are at times “faithless” and betray God’s trust, he remains faithful to us. Even when we go astray, even when that leads to  consequences in the short run, through it all God always continues to love us and offer us grace and mercy. That would seem to make more sense in the light of the consistent witness of the Scriptures. The most fundamental affirmation of the Bible is that God remains faithful to us, no matter what. Always has been and always will be.

But there’s still that part about denying and being denied. Would Jesus really deny us if we happened to not perfectly live up to our commitment to follow him and to bear witness to him? Does God really reject us if we have times in our lives when we fall short and are “faithless”? That seems to be the implication here. And many in the history of the church have understood it that way: they think it means that if we fall short or lose heart, God will remain true to himself by rejecting us! In fact, throughout history, when Christians have faced persecution, church leaders have debated whether someone could be forgiven for denying their faith in Jesus in the face of imminent death. Some thought you could be forgiven once, but no more. Many have taken a harder stance and said even once is too much![2]

Again, I would argue that interpretation doesn’t do justice to the way God actually deals with his fallible and wayward people in Scripture. Whatever “denying” and being “denied” means in this context, it has to take into account the fact that Peter specifically “denied” Jesus three times, and yet he was not “denied” but restored!  Perhaps that’s the point—even if we fall short the way Peter did, God’s faithfulness provides a way back for us, ultimately and finally, if not immediately as in Peter’s case. Whatever the “denying” that leads to being “denied” means, it has to be something more than just human weakness. It must be a final and definitive rejection of God’s grace and mercy and love, not simply a failure of nerve.[3] I think that applies to Jesus’ warning as well as our lesson from 2 Timothy.

The Bible bears witness time and again to the promise that, even if we are faithless, God remains faithful to his love, mercy, and grace toward us, which are unconditional, unqualified, unlimited, and irrevocable.[4] In light of our experience with betrayal, it may be hard for us to wrap our heads around this promise. How can God respond to our betraying him with such love, mercy, and grace? We don’t readily respond to betrayal by offering even forgiveness, let alone unconditional love. But as the Scriptures remind us, our way is not God’s way. God’s way is to send his son to die for those who are at odds with him, effecting reconciliation once and for all. God’s way is to remain faithful to us, even when we can at times fall short. God’s way is to restore us when we stumble and fall. When we wonder on whom we can depend in these trying times, I would say we can always depend on God, because throughout time and change, throughout all of history, God has demonstrated that he is always faithful to us!

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 10/12/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] See, notably, John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 218-19: “he threatens that they who, through the dread of persecution, leave off the confession of his name, have no part or lot with Christ. … Hence it is evident, that all who deny Christ are disowned by him.”

[3] Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, “The First and Second Letters to Timothy and the Letter to Titus,” New Interpreter’s Bible XI:844.

[4] See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.1:510, where he describes “God’s action in relation to the apostasy of the creature” as one of grace and reconciliation, and in this God is supremely true to himself and his purposes.

Not In Vain

 Not in Vain

1 Corinthians 15:25-28, 35-58[1]

I mentioned last week that hope is something we all need to thrive in this life. But hope can be tricky, because it can be hard to know what to place your hope in. Especially in times when it feels like everything you thought you could count on in life has dropped out from under you. Those of us who practice faith in Jesus Christ have a hope for something more, beyond this life. But that hope has resulted all too often in an attitude that what happens now doesn’t really matter. That was why Karl Marx criticized religion as a kind of drug that made people passive in the face of the wrongs that were being perpetrated against them. I think that’s why we need the full version of the Christian hope: not just that we’ll go to heaven when we die, but also that God is working to restore all our lives and everything he created in the same way that Jesus was raised to new life. The miracle of the resurrection on that first Easter Sunday points us to the promise that God is working to change this world, and everyone and everything in it.

Even with that hope, there are still some pitfalls to avoid.[2] For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly optimistic view. Because we have the hope of being with Jesus at our death, we can treat death like it’s no “big deal.” It’s just “passing on” to another stage of our journey. That’s not the biblical view. As Paul puts it in our lesson for today, death is an “enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). Death has a “sting” that is real and harmful (1 Cor 15:55). Paul’s not just talking about physical death, although as many of us have experienced, that can be truly harmful to those of us who have lost loved ones. Paul is also talking about the destructive power that “death” exerts in our lives and in our world to this day through the powers and persons who align themselves with evil.[3] Our hope is not that somehow death is no “big deal.” Our hope is that in Jesus’ very real death on the cross, and especially by raising Jesus to new life, God has overcome the power of death.

The other pitfall goes to the opposite extreme. For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly pessimistic view. Because of the harm that death continues to inflict in our lives and in our world, we can decide that God must not be able to do anything about it.[4] But that’s also not a biblical view! Not by a long stretch! The God to whom the Apostle Paul points us is the God who not only worked in the lives of the people of Israel and in the lives of believers in the early church all those centuries ago. This God is the God who continues to work in and through us to bring life out of all the harm that death can inflict on us. We have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because Jesus died a very real death on the cross. But we also have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because God raised Jesus to a new life that is just as real. That means death will not have the last word for anyone.

The hope of the Gospel is the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. It’s the promise that the life God revealed in Jesus’ resurrection is a new kind of life that is stronger than the worst that death and all its powers and those who align themselves with them can throw at us. Paul points to this hope when he insists that “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54), the victory Jesus won when God raised him from death. Paul can go so far as to “taunt” death like one might do to a defeated and humiliated bully: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55, NLT). The reason he can act so confidently in the face of the harm that death still can and does inflict on us is because he knows that God has given us “victory” over all of it “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). The life that God has injected into this world through Jesus’ resurrection has already defeated death and all the powers and persons aligned with it. And the promise of our faith is that this new life will finally and fully define all creation. For everyone and everything!

Our faith and our hope exist in a balance. We don’t naively water down the power of death or the very real harm those who align themselves with evil can do in our world. Rather, with Paul we take all of that seriously as an “enemy.” But on the other hand, we don’t just give up in the face of the sometimes overwhelming discouragement we feel over the influence of those powers and persons. That’s because we’ve seen the light of new life that dawned on that first Easter morning, and with Paul and the hosts of believers throughout the ages we put our faith and our hope in the power of that new life.[5] We hold our faith and our hope in the power of God to overcome evil in this world in a balance. But the scale is tipped in favor of hope, because Jesus’ resurrection points us to the day when the final victory will come.

We don’t place our hope in some idealistic vision that attributes to humanity a goodness that can prevail against all evil. There is much goodness to be found in the human family, to be sure. But it’s not equal to the task of overcoming the powers of evil and those who align themselves with it. Neither do we place our hope in sheer determination and willpower to resist in the face of all the wrongs that are so blatantly perpetrated in our day, every day. Human willpower isn’t sufficient to the task either. We place our hope in the confidence that, as the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth said, “God is not God in vain.”[6] Or as Paul puts it in our lesson for today, ultimately God will be “utterly supreme over everything everywhere” (1 Cor 15:28, NLT).[7] And so we place our hope in God, and in the victory he has won in Jesus Christ. And that hope leads us to the confidence that God will fulfill all that he has promised to do. One day, we will share in the new life that Jesus now enjoys.

So how then shall we live in these times of turmoil? Do we retreat behind the walls of our homes and churches and sit back, waiting for God to work a miracle? Or do we “plunge into the present struggle” as our affirmation of faith last week called us to do, putting the courage and energy our faith and hope give us to good use here and now?[8] I think St. Paul would have us do the latter. After all that he had to say about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection and the hope it gives us, Paul concluded this chapter by saying, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless” (1 Cor 15:58, NLT). That last phrase is often translated more literally “in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We may or may not see tangible results from our work. But I believe that every act of integrity, every act of kindness, every act motivated by faith and hope and love can and does make a difference.[9] Not just because of our sincerity, or our determination, but because the new life of our resurrected lord Jesus means that what we do here and now is “not in vain”!

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/23/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed, 378.

[3] Paul speaks of this especially in Romans 5, where he contrasts the effects of death’s “reign” with the effects of God’s grace that lead to the “victory” that we have through Jesus Christ (cf. esp. Rom 5:17). See especially The Message translation: “If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” Cf. also Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, p.1302.

[4] This was Harold Kushner’s view in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He and his wife had experienced the loss of a child, so while I may disagree with his view, I would not want to criticize him personally.

[5] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 283. See also ibid., 285, where he says that Christians “know of a power at work here and now greater than the power of evil, a power that keeps breaking into our godless and godforsaken world to heal old wounds, make new beginnings, and (if only now and then, here and there) give us a glimpse of the final victory of God’s compassion and justice that are on the way.” See further, ibid., 375: “The God in whom we hope is a God who not only will be but is the powerful and compassionate Creator and Ruler of the world. The crucified and risen Christ who will come to overthrow all the powers of darkness and evil that spoil God’s good creation and human life in it has already triumphed over them and even now is at work to complete the work he has begun.”

[6] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.4.1:196. While he concedes that work of reconciliation that Jesus has accomplished through the cross and resurrection (elsewhere he calls it “the accomplished alteration of the whole world situation”; ibid., p. 191) still faces opposition in this world, he insists that we must see this “battle” as resulting in the victory of God.

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 163, where he points to the final victory of Jesus’ resurrection as serving “the sole and all-embracing lordship of God.”

[8] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 10.5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[9] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 280-81: “we can and must confidently throw ourselves into the fight against evil in our own lives and in the world around us, knowing that we do not fight alone but with the one who is stronger than all the forces of evil.”

High and Humble

 High and Humble

Isaiah 57:15, Hebrew 4:12-16[1]

I’ve told you recently about some of my favorite Bible verses. Another one is Isaiah 57:15: “Our holy God lives forever in the highest heavens, and this is what he says: Though I live high above in the holy place, I am here to help those who are humble and depend only on me” (Isa 57:15, CEV). I love the way that verse combines two important aspects of who God is: God is both far beyond our ability to comprehend, and also as close to us as the very air we’re breathing right this minute. I like this verse because I’m not so sure we do a very good job holding those two essential concepts together. We’re comfortable with a God who “lives away up there,” but I’m not so sure we’re comfortable with a God who “walks beside me day by day.” At least I would suggest the way we live our lives indicates we’re happy to keep God at arm’s length, or perhaps more!

Think about it: we want a God who’s bigger than our problems. And we want a God who’s bigger than our problems to help when we ask. But we really prefer to live our own lives, thank you very much, when it comes to all the other aspects of life we think we can “handle.” I’m not sure we really want a God who gets involved with every aspect of our lives. If he does, it means we have to surrender every aspect of our lives to God. As much as we may say we want to do that, I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us prefer to stay in control. For some of us, I would say we might prefer that God would simply mind his own business and stay out of ours!

But that’s not the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God who brought the children of Isael out of slavery in Egypt and then again brought them home from exile in Babylon. It’s not the God who came to live among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and who fed the hungry, embraced the outcasts, and got down and played with little children. Yes, God is the one who “lives forever in the highest heavens.” Yes, God is the one whose love for us and whose work on our behalf is infinitely beyond anything we can even dare to imagine (Eph 3:20). That also means that God is the one who is living and working in all our lives all the time. We may not even be able to dare to imagine what God is doing in and through us right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Bible insists God is indeed working in us, giving us “the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (Phil 2:13, NLT).[2]

That brings us to our Scripture lesson from Hebrews for today. We see a reflection of this belief that God is always at work in our lives in the statement that “the word of God is alive and powerful.” We may not always be aware of God’s living and powerful work in our lives because we’ve come up with so many ways to pay attention to anything but that. Again, I would say part of the reason why we prefer to distract ourselves from what God is be doing in our lives is because we’re really not all that comfortable having God that closely involved in our lives. If God’s word truly “exposes our innermost thoughts and desires” as our lesson says, we may want God to keep his distance. We may prefer a God who “lives away up there” because we really don’t want to get that close to the God who is more powerful than we can imagine and who works in our lives to accomplish his will, not ours!

But our scripture reading from Hebrews emphasizes that God’s powerful work in and through us right here and right now is not something we should fear. And that’s another lesson we learn from Jesus. Just as we believe that Jesus came in person to show us what God is truly like, so also we can trust in the image of God that Jesus shows us. Last week we saw that image reflected by playing with children. This week our lesson from Hebrews reminds us that, because he was willing to become like us and suffer for us, Jesus shows us the depth of God’s compassion and mercy. As our lesson puts it, Jesus “understands our weaknesses” because he “faced all of the same temptations as we do” (Heb 4:15, NLT). 

While that statement is truly comforting, it’s also one that can be confusing. We have a hard time understanding how God can be both bigger than we can imagine and also intimately involved in every aspect of our lives. Our Scripture lesson today holds those two seemingly irreconcilable affirmations together by referring to God in terms of approaching “the throne of grace.” On the one hand, clearly God is depicted as one who exercises authority and power from a “throne.” The Bible consistently portrays God as the one who reigns over the entire created order. Not just what we can see, but all the galaxies that exist throughout the universe. God is the one who reigns over all the nations, and over each of our lives. God sits on a “throne” with authority and power.

And yet on the other hand, the Scripture lesson speaks of God’s throne as a “throne of grace.” The Bible reveals to us a God who empathizes with our struggles and sympathizes with our plight, a God who shares our pain and our suffering. The image of God revealed by Jesus Christ, the crucified savior, is one of compassion, and mercy. One aspect of our understanding that God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth is that his experience of our full humanity reveals to us that God really and truly understands what we’re going through. It’s easy to think that God is so far “up there” that he really can’t identify with or understand what we have to go through in this life. But the lesson reminds us that Jesus “faced all of the same temptations as we do.” That means God cares deeply about us and empathizes with us so that God is intimately involved in every facet of our lives. For this reason, our Scripture lesson today invites us to turn in our time of need to the “throne of grace,” confident that when we do so we will find compassion and mercy.

That brings me back to the verse from Isaiah 57:15. In the version we heard earlier, the translation implies the fact that God is both exalted and compassionate are in tension with one another: “Though I live high above in the holy place, I am here to help those who are humble and depend only on me” (Isa 57:15, CEV). But I find it interesting that in the New Living Translation, those two aspects of God’s character aren’t in tension at all: “The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: ‘I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant heart’” (Isa 57:15, NLT). The “high and holy place” where God lives is precisely with “those whose spirits are contrite and humble,” precisely with us. God’s exalted power is displayed precisely in his willingness to humble himself in order to get involved in our lives, in every aspect of our lives.[3] And, of course, the ultimate purpose of God’s willingness to get involved in our lives to that extent is to transform us into the joyful and free people he created us to be, so that we might share his love with others and finally enjoy that love in his presence forever.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 10/13/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Philippians 2:12-13 in The Message: “Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.”

[3] Cf. William C. Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God, 19:  “God’s power is the power of love. … in freely loving, God is most of all who God is, most exemplifying the kind of power God has.” Cf. similarly Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:159: “In His high majesty He is humble. It is in this high humility that He speaks and acts as the God who reconciles the world to himself.

The Waiting Place

 The Waiting Place

Lamentations 3:19-32[1]

Most of us are familiar with the classic by Dr. Seuss, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” It’s a wonderfully encouraging look at life’s journey. The idea is that, especially when you’re starting out, you really can’t even begin to imagine the places your journey will take you. And the theme is that “Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.” But then, of course, he adds, “Except when you don't. Because, sometimes, you won't.” And one of those times he mentions is when you find yourself in what he calls “The Waiting Place.” The “Waiting Place” is for people “Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow.” Even Dr. Suess calls the “Waiting Place” a “most useless place.”[2]

We’re not a people who like to wait. For anything. It’s irritating at best, because time spent waiting seems like wasted time to us. At worst it can be infuriating, because nothing brings out the worst in us quicker than having our plans or expectations thwarted. And waiting is one of those things that can definitely thwart our plans! Our instant economy has spoiled us. We’re used to getting whatever we want right when we want it. If we do have to wait, we tend to take out a smartphone or another device and dive into the screen. The idea of just waiting quietly and patiently seems to be a foreign concept to us.

But waiting is part of life. And through the ages, those who have taught us the most about what it means to “walk humbly with our God” have made it clear that learning how to “wait for the Lord” plays a central role in spiritual growth, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.[3] In the Bible, “waiting” is an expression of faith. We “wait for the Lord” in faith because we recognize that much of our lives is out of our control. But more than that, we “wait for the Lord” because that’s how we grow stronger in our faith. It’s a bit like the concept of leaving a portion of the ground fallow for a season as a means of restoring and enriching the soil. Or the fact that in Winter, trees that appear to have gone “dormant” are doing some of their most important growing. They’re sending down roots to seek out nutrients, growing deeper and stronger underground while it may seem to us like not much is happening. Waiting for the Lord is how we send down deeper roots to grow stronger in faith.

The prophet Jeremiah knew about the value of waiting for the Lord, as we saw in our lesson from Lamentations for today. Much of Lamentations is not particularly uplifting. It came from a bitter time in the history of the people of Israel. The Babylonians had invaded the land, and the city of Jerusalem was under siege. The famine that resulted led to shocking atrocities. When he looked around, what he saw was his nation in ruins, his beloved city of Jerusalem besieged, and his people seemingly abandoned by God. Much of the earlier part of Lamentations contains the outpouring of his grief. At the end of it all, he could say, “Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost!” (Lam 3:18, NLT). Imagine the prophet Jeremiah saying that! It sounds like he had given up not only his hope, but also his faith!

But the prophet turned a corner precisely when all seemed lost. Although he could say that he would never forget that “awful time,” he remembers the most fundamental affirmation about God in the Bible, the bedrock of faith: “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning” (Lam 3:22-23, NLT). It’s phrased in different ways in different verses, but this is the essential expression of faith in the Bible: God’s love never ends, and we can always count on him to be faithful. So, despite all the bitterness and the grief Jeremiah had been through, he could hold onto his faith: “I still dare to hope” (Lam 3:21, NLT).

We might wonder what made it possible for him to have such a dramatic change of heart—from “everything is lost” to “I still dare to hope.” If we listen carefully, he tells us. It wasn’t some spectacular vision from God, nor was it the presence of an angel that gave him new hope. The situation hadn’t changed. What changed was his attitude. And he made that change by waiting for the Lord. I think he show this was what made the difference when he affirms that “it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord” (Lam 3:26, NLT). To be sure, waiting for the Lord is no easier than any other waiting. In fact, it may be harder! We may often suffer from doubt or anxiety. But what makes it “good” to “wait quietly” for the Lord is that’s how we learn that “no one is abandoned by the Lord forever” (Lam 3:31, NLT). I think in light of what the New Testament teaches, I would say that “no one is abandoned by the Lord ever”!

We live in a world of “perpetual motion,” 24/7/365, year after year! “Waiting” is what we do when we’re helpless to change the situation. We “wait” only when it’s the only option. “Waiting” calls to mind boredom, or anxiety, or restlessness. But in the Bible, “waiting” for the Lord refers to a posture of trust. To “wait” for the Lord in the Bible refers to trusting God’s unfailing and faithful love when everything in life seems to have given way. This may remind you of one of my favorite hymns: “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” I suspect that some of you may share that opinion. You may know that it’s based on this passage. It might seem surprising that such a wonderful encouraging hymn could come from such a bleak and dismal situation. But if you look at it from the biblical perspective, it’s not surprising at all. With all due respect to Dr. Seuss, the “Waiting Place” is not a “most useless place” after all. In fact, it may be one of the most useful places for growing our faith. That’s because the “Waiting Place” is where we learn again that God is faithful always! Always has been, always will be. It’s where we learn again that God is always for us, never against us. It’s where we learn again that God loves us with a love that never fails, no matter what.[4]

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, PhD on 6/30/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! 1990.

[3] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, 91: “Waiting … is the foundation of the spiritual life” (quoted from Simone Weil, First and Last Notebook).

[4] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1, 385: “[God] is wholly Himself and true to Himself in the fact that he is true to us.”

Dancing With God

Dancing with God

Romans 8:9-11[1]

Last week I mentioned that there is a reason for the things I say and do every week in worship. And it’s not just about taking the easy way out. As I mentioned last week, I frame every sermon with a reference to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I do that because, believe it or not, I think that our faith in the one God who is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is essential to our understanding of God, of salvation, and of our place in God’s work to redeem the whole creation.[2] We understand that God truly entered this world to become “God-who-is-with-us” based on our belief that Jesus God the Son. It is that same belief that enables us to understand, based on Jesus’ life and death, that God is also “God-who-is-for-us.” And God the Spirit makes all the amazing things God has done for us real in our hearts and lives to this day.

So, yes, it is my heartfelt conviction that a Christian view of God is only possible through the lens of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the one triune God working together to gather us all into the love that defines God’s very being.[3] Without the creation of all things in love, we would not have the assurance we do that God loves us all. Without the sending of Jesus the Son of God to show us God’s love, we could not be sure that God loves us all. Without the constant presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, our faith in God’s love would be based solely on stories of events that happened a very long time ago. It’s only the love of God as revealed in creation, as demonstrated by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to new life, and continually poured into our hearts through the Spirit that gives us confidence to trust that God’s love for us never fails!

This isn’t just some abstract conclusion based on ivory-tower speculations of theologians. It is written into virtually every page of the New Testament. The word “Trinity” may not occur in the Bible, but the idea is written into virtually every page of the New Testament. We see it especially in our lesson from the book of Romans for today. There’s one verse in particular that has always fascinated me. It’s Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” St. Paul is talking about the new life that we all have through our faith in Jesus Christ. But he makes it clear that this new life in us is the result of what God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit does in our lives.

Notice that it starts out with a reference to “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead.” Well, the one who raised Jesus from the dead is always God in the NT. So Paul starts this beautiful declaration by talking about what God does in order for us to experience new life. He’s the one who sent Jesus to demonstrate his love for all people by his life and death. God is also the one who raised Jesus from the dead to make it clear that our new life was not just intended for this world alone. And God brings us to new life by giving us his own Spirit within us. All of this originates in God’s very being, which is defined in the Bible as “love.” God’s love is a love that reaches out to claim us all, and God never stops reaching out to us all to claim us in his love.

St. Paul also refers to the role of Jesus Christ, the Son of God in our experience of new life. Jesus the Son of God is the one who came forth, bearing God’s love into the world in human form. Everything he did and said was to demonstrate God’s love for us all. Particularly the fact that he refused to exclude those whom the religious people of that day would normally exclude from God’s love. Of course, his death was a decisive demonstration of God’s love for us. Indeed, it has been said that in Jesus’ death on the cross God was present, drawing the whole world into his love.[4] And the final demonstration of God’s love reaching out to us to bring us new life took place when Jesus rose from the dead. Every aspect of Jesus’ life happened the way it did to demonstrate God’s love for us all.

St. Paul’s description of the new life we enjoy through our faith would not be complete without the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s because the Holy Spirit “dwells” in us that we have this new life. In the NT, the fact that the Spirit “lives” in us, or “dwells” in us is not a reference to some kind of “come-and-go” presence. Although we don’t always “feel the Spirit moving” in our hearts, make no mistake: the Spirit is always there! That’s one reason why I like Gene Peterson’s translation of this verse in The Message: “It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s”!

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this is hard to wrap your head around. Some of the most brilliant theologians throughout history have tried. Having read some of them, I’d have to say that I’m not sure their efforts always shed light. Many times they only make it harder to understand! I think what might make the most sense of “trinity” is the idea that the varied ways in which God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit works in our lives are all expressions of God’s love that seeks to draw us to himself. We know God’s love through creation, we know God’s love in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and we know God’s love through the presence of the Spirit within us.

There have been a lot of analogies that have been used to illustrate the idea of “trinity” throughout history. There is one analogy that makes sense to me. It is the analogy of dancing. We sing about it in our hymn “I Danced in the Morning.” The analogy is an ancient one. The idea is that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are joined in an eternal dance by the love they share for each other.[5] But love always seeks out others, and so the purpose of this eternal dance of God’s has always been to draw all of us to join that dance. The God who has loved us from all eternity not only became one of us, but also continually takes us by the hand, leading us gently but persistently into this ongoing dance. I’m not much for dancing myself. Unless it’s a wedding for one of my children, my grandchildren are there, and I’m feeling particularly silly, I’m probably not going to join in the dance. Someone would have to take me by the hand and pull me out there. Being that kind person, I’m grateful that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, keeps reaching out to all of us, drawing us into God’s love, continually teaching us all what it means to join in the dance of love.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 5/26/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 53: “the church can only understand its own position or abode in participation in the movement of the history of God’s dealings with the world, and therefore as one element in this movement. Its attempts to understand itself are attempts at understanding the movement of the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world; and its attempts to understand this movement are attempts at understanding itself.”

[3] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 56: “A Christian doctrine of the Trinity which is bound to the history of Christ and the history of the Spirit must conceive the Trinity as the Trinity of the sending and seeking love of God which is open from its very origin. The triune God is the God who is open to man [sic], open to the world and open to time.”

[4] cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 208. He quotes Cyril of Jerusalem as saying “On the cross, God stretched out his hands to embrace the ends of the earth.” In fact, Cyril was speaking of Jesus (“He stretched out His hands on the Cross, that He might embrace the ends of the world”), and it would seem that Moltmann is giving his statement a trinitarian interpretation. Cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 13.28 (NPNF 2.7, 89).

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, 174-75. He quotes John of Damascus, a 7^th century Greek Father, who said that the unity between the Father, Son, and Spirit is the relationship of love that they share with each other. His term for it was perichorēsis, a Greek term that literally means “rotation,” to describe the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Moltmann (ibid.) interprets it this way, “The Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Son. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one.”

The God of Life

 The God of Life

Luke 20:27-38[1]

Life has a funny way of teaching us the lessons we need to learn. As much as we may try to deny it, one of life’s basic lessons is that, as William Faulkner is famously quoted, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” All of us live our whole lives under the influence of our experiences. We can either make peace with our past, accept it for what it was, and move forward with our lives. Or we can try to ignore our past, making an effort to forget the memories that can come back to haunt us. But whatever we try to suppress festers to the point that it exerts even more power over us. And when it does come out, it’s usually quite ugly.

While it’s true that we can never escape our past experiences, I don’t believe for a second that we are trapped by them. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be much point in living. Then Benjamin Franklin was right when he said, “in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” That kind of outlook is common, but it’s a prescription for a pretty hopeless view of life. From this perspective, death has the final word on everything. And that means that the human family is hopelessly trapped in the vicious circles of selfishness, hatred, poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. All that’s left is just to resign ourselves that “Life is useless, all useless,” as the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes says (Eccl 1:2, TEV). There’s not much room in that outlook for faith or hope or love.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was responding in part to this kind of pessimism about life. He had been answering questions from various groups of Jewish leaders, each one intent on embarrassing him in front of the people. One question posed came from the Sadducees. They were the ruling priests who controlled the Temple. They were also the ones who cooperated with the Roman empire. And they were not above bribing the Roman governor for the privilege of serving as the chief religious leaders of the Jewish people.

As Luke tells us, the Sadducees didn’t believe in “resurrection.” They lived in a closed system, and they weren’t open to the idea that there could be anything more to life than what they already knew. The Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him about the practice of a man marrying his brother’s widow. Moses had told them to do this so that the first child would be the descendant of the dead brother, to ensure that his name would continue to live on through his offspring. This was the Sadducee’s view of “resurrection”: people “live on” through their children. Their question to Jesus was about seven brothers who in turn married the same woman. They asked him, “In the resurrection … whose wife will the woman be?” (Lk. 20:33). I don’t think they were really looking for an answer. They were just trying to make the idea of a “resurrection” look ridiculous. And Jesus with it.

But Jesus “corrected” them by recalling the time when Moses met God at the burning bush. There, God spoke of himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). When Moses had this encounter, the patriarchs had been dead for centuries. Jesus drew the inference that this proves that the dead are raised, for he said that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (Lk. 20:38). Jesus went on to explain that in the next life there would be no need for ways to ensure that a dead man had descendants, because they would all be “children of the resurrection,” no longer subject to death (Lk. 20:35-36). In other words, their question was irrelevant.

I think one of the most important points Jesus was trying to make here is that you cannot limit God’s work to the past. If God is the God of life, he is also the God of the living. And that means that our future is not one that’s defined by death, but rather by life. God’s work in the world is based on promises that point toward a future with hope and life. Promises like “I will wipe away every tear,” and “they will beat their swords into ploughshares,” and “I am making everything new.” The Christian faith is at heart the hope that God has begun to do just that through Jesus Christ. Our faith insists that from God’s perspective, the final word that defines us all is not death, but life.

I think that how we choose to look at all of this makes a great difference in our attitude toward stewardship. As I mentioned last week, in the Reformed tradition we believe that stewardship is not just about money, but it’s about seeing our lives as a gift from God to be invested for the sake of the Kingdom. If we choose to live within a closed system and assume that there’s only so much to go around, we’re probably not going to be willing to take much risk when it comes to our money or our lives. But if we can look at things from the perspective of God’s open future, a future in which life is the final word rather than death, then perhaps maybe we can step out in faith. If we can see the future as one in which our “labor in the Lord” is “not in vain” but rather makes an important contribution to advancing God’s purposes in our community and our world, it puts our stewardship in a whole different perspective.

We all have the choice: we can live as if the past overrules any hope for the future, and death ultimately makes life “useless.” If we choose to assume that our best is back there in the past—which means it’s gone—I doubt that we’re going to be interested in going out of our way to invest anything for God’s Kingdom. But if we choose to live based on the faith that the “God of life” is at work around and among us to make everything new, then maybe we can have the courage to stake our lives on God’s promises. When we embrace God’s vision for the future, perhaps we’ll begin to realize that we have no idea what God can or cannot do in our lives, in this congregation, and in this community!

The next step is to put our faith into practice every day through prayer, giving back what we’ve been given, helping those in need, inviting others to join us,  promoting community, studying the Bible together, and joining together for worship on the Lord’s Day. When we invest our lives for the sake of the kingdom of God, it’s a big vision we’re taking on. None of us can do it alone. It will take all of us doing all we can together in a spirit of humble prayer, asking the “God of life” who is the source for everything we have to send us what we need. More than that, it will take God himself working in and through us, whose last word is not death but life!

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[1] ©2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 11/6/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.For a video recording of this sermon, check out my Pastor Alan YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/JSjQzIxI7HE